<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => "They told me *IN-BRANCH* that they needed an $a[SMS]-compatible number so I wouldn&apos;t need to come in-branch to verify my account ...",
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/09.jpg" alt="Ivy-covered trees across the road" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed my mother had taken me to the $a[FCC] headquarters, but it was more like a gift shop than an office building.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="maths">
	<h2>Maths</h2>
	<p>
		There&apos;s a problem that&apos;s been bugging me for months now.
		I want to eventually program my own $a[RPG], and I want a sort of skill grid included.
		Items in the grid will be regular polygons (that is, flat-sided shapes in which all the side lengths are equal and all the angle measures are equal), but what polygons do I have to choose from?
		At worst, I&apos;d like to know what my options are before I decide what shape of grid to use.
		At best, I&apos;d like to include multiple grids, one utilising each possible shape.
		I&apos;ve known there to be three shapes that work for this task: triangles, squares, and hexagons.
		But are those the <strong>*only*</strong> options?
		I certainly think so, but how do I mathematically <strong>*prove*</strong> it?
		There should, at the very least, be an equation that tells me whether a given regular polygon could be used without my having to use the number of sides to figure out the angle measure by hand, then finding whether that angle can be multiplied by a whole integer to reach a full 360°.
		It seems like such a simple problem, but I haven&apos;t been able to keep the numbers straight in my head long enough to get an algebraic formula worked out.
		I know, it&apos;s rather pathetic.
		I should have been able to figure this out fairly quickly.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, today, I finally had a flash of inspiration.
		My equation came out as <code>360/(180-(360/<var>\$x</var>))</code>, where <var>\$x</var> is either the number of sides the shape has or the number of them that meet in the corner.
		The resulting value is the other one.
		That is, if you put in the number of sides, you get out the number that meet in the corner, while if you put in the number that meet in the corner, you get back out the number of sides the shape has to have.
		If the input and the output are both positive integers, you have a working grid shape.
		The equation reduces though, making it <code>2/(1-(2/<var>\$x</var>))</code>.
		While testing the equation, I proved that if a regular polygon has twenty or fewer sides and works as a grid shape, that polygon can only be a triangle, a square, or a hexagon.
		And logically speaking, it doesn&apos;t make sense to keep trying bigger numbers.
		There will never be a shape in which two meet in the corner, because that&apos;d be meeting at a side, not a corner.
		That means you need at least three.
		Three meeting in a corner yields a hexagon shape, while shapes with more sides allow for less of the shape to come together, so it only makes sense to try shapes with six of fewer sides.
		And five sides simply doesn&apos;t work.
		But I pentagons didn&apos;t work before I found the equation.
	</p>
	<p>
		I guess I should have seen that nothing with more sides than a hexagon would work before I found the equation, due to the logic above.
		But I just couldn&apos;t keep everything straight in my mind long enough to come to that conclusion.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="credit">
	<h2>Credit card</h2>
	<p>
		I went into the bank today, and things began pretty much as I thought they would.
		The teller directed me to speak with a banker, and the banker placed a telephone call to see how to verify the account.
		The banker then put me on the line with the telephone support representative.
		But then things got weird.
		The telephone support representative, who had already spoken with the banker and knew I was in-branch, then told me that they&apos;d verify my account via $a[SMS] so I didn&apos;t have to go in-branch.
		Seriously?
		So I don&apos;t have to go in-branch.
		While I&apos;m sitting in a banker&apos;s cubicle in-branch.
		That caught me off-guard, so I didn&apos;t quite respond as well as I should have.
		I should have said that there was no need to avoid my coming in-branch, as I was in-branch already, but instead explained that I have no telephone service first, then didn&apos;t quite make it clear how idiotic it was to claim they were trying to avoid my needing to come in-branch when they knew very well that I was already there with the banker.
	</p>
	<p>
		So I was right last night as to what they were after.
		They were trying to force a telephone number onto the account.
		I was just wrong about the method they&apos;d use.
		Instead of merely asking me for my (non-existent) telephone number, doing so over the telephone to reduce my credibility when trying to tell them I have no telephone number to give them, they additionally wanted to make sure the telephone number was associated with a mobile line by pinging it via $a[SMS].
		Very likely, they want to pester me with account updates and/or offers (probably not offers, or not offers often) via $a[SMS].
		No.
		I don&apos;t think so.
		Send me that junk via email or post, not via $a[SMS].
		It&apos;s not that hard.
		I&apos;m a lot more likely to pay attention to something I receive digitally if I&apos;ve got a full keyboard in front of me an not a tiny touchscreen.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, so after explaining that I was already in-branch and that $a[SMS] is not a way they can reach me, they gave me the low-down on what I&apos;d need to do in-branch: produce three forms of proof of postal address.
		Was that so hard?
		I just so happened to have <strong>*five*</strong> documents on me showing my name and address.
		No need to resort to filthy $a[SMS].
	</p>
	<p>
		First, my photo $a[ID].
		The banker accepted that.
		Next, my Social Security card.
		I&apos;d brought that along, thinking it might come in handy, but not considering that I might need it as a proof of address.
		However, the banker rejected it, with no explanation given.
		Next, the letter from the bank telling me to telephone them.
		The banker rejected that as well.
		They claimed I needed documents not from their own bank, because they needed proof that I could be reached at that address.
		They refused to admit that that made no sense, as since the letter clearly had reached me, it was clearly proof that I could be reached at that address.
		I wasn&apos;t even pushing that they accept the letter, only that they admit that because they weren&apos;t accepting it, their claim that the reason such proof was needed was to make sure I could be reached there was invalid.
		Next, I had two cheques on me that I brought because I planned to deposit them at the credit union afterwards.
		One was my tax refund from the government, while the other was a pay cheque, so they weren&apos;t even personal cheques that could be claimed to have been intentionally deceptive.
		Both were declined as proofs of address.
	</p>
	<p>
		The banker told me repeatedly to try bringing in an electric bill, even though I kept explaining that the utility board sends me bills via email, not post, so that won&apos;t work.
		They kept going back to that though, telling me that would be a good option for one of the proofs.
		Seriously, are they that dense?
		I can&apos;t bring you what I don&apos;t have!
		Now that I think on it though, they don&apos;t even send me bills via email.
		They send me notices that they&apos;re ready for me to pay, but they don&apos;t even tell me how <strong>*much*</strong> I owe.
		I only find that out once I head into their office to pay it off.
		They also asked for insurance bills, but again, I don&apos;t have those.
		Another thing they asked for was my rental agreement.
		Once I got home though, I realised that wouldn&apos;t work because my copy of the rental agreement is under my birth name, not my legal name.
	</p>
	<p>
		So anyway, once home, I went through and found everything I could think of with my name and address on it, most of which was all spam.
		I even brought an old power bill from back when the utility board used to send me bills to humour the banker, but they admitted it was too old to work for their purposes.
		Do you know what they ended up accepting, along with my photo $a[ID]?
		A pay stub and a W-2 form <strong>*from the same company*</strong>.
		So really, those two were basically <strong>*one*</strong> proof of address, not two.
		And here&apos;s the real kicker: <strong>neither of those documents was actually mailed to me, meaning that neither of those documents actually proved I could get mail at that address</strong>.
		They just so happened to have my name and address on them.
		I get the feeling dealing with this bank isn&apos;t going to be pleasant.
		Still, I think the world would be a much better place if companies, including banks, would stop trying to bind everyone to a telephone number.
		And that&apos;s never going to happen unless enough of us assert that we&apos;re not going to allow ourselves to be bound to garbage telephone numbers.
		It&apos;s therefore important that I deal with companies and make that assertion frequently.
		Obviously, I&apos;m only one person, and I won&apos;t make a dent.
		But if everyone has that attitude (about anything, really, not specifically this), nothing will ever get fixed.
		If I don&apos;t do this, that makes me another of the compliant masses, which makes me a part of the problem.
		I don&apos;t want to be part of the problem.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion posts for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I agree, those are skills of a network engineer, or at least a network administrator, and not skills of a programmer.
			If you notice though, none of the jobs I could find were programming jobs though.
			Two of the the jobs relate to system administration.
			These jobs tackle Joomla! from the side of getting it up and keeping it running, not building extensions for it.
			The third job I listed was that of a content publisher, which tackles Joomla! from the side of using it as a publishing platform.
			Unless I could spend my days writing $a[GPL] software, a programming job isn&apos;t write for me.
			I could never write proprietary software and still be able to live with myself.
			I&apos;d even rather work fast food or pump gasoline than write proprietary software programs.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			It looks like you found several places to learn how to use Joomla!.
			I just went with &quot;try reading the instruction manual written by the people who defined the functionality and thus know best how it works&quot;, but you went beyond that and provided three other options.
		</p>
		<p>
			It&apos;s interesting to think about how many languages go into a single project such as Joomla!.
			You listed that knowledge of $a[PHP], $a[CSS], $a[HTML], and JavaScript are all needed for working on Joomla!, and Joomla! uses these languages for various purposes. We have two scripting languages, a markup language, and a style definition language.
			For scripting languages, we&apos;ve got one that&apos;s gimped enough to be mostly safe for Web browsers and one that&apos;s been optimised for Web servers.
			Arguably, a unified scripting language might be feasible (Node.js?), but that&apos;d still leave us with three distinct languages we&apos;d need to work with for a single project, and even then, I much prefer $a[PHP] over JavaScript.
		</p>
		<p>
			It&apos;d be nice to see those listings as well.
			Would you mind providing links to the job postings you looked over?
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="work">
	<h2>Work</h2>
	<p>
		Though they didn&apos;t show it until the end of my shift while I was on-duty, I&apos;m told the head manager was in one of their foul moods.
		I can&apos;t help but wonder - and hope - if it has anything to do with lower sales.
		If sales have dropped enough from my lack of up-selling, maybe they&apos;ll finally take me off the drive-through register.
		I&apos;m sick and tired of the head manager ripping me a new one every time a customer throws a tantrum.
	</p>
	<p>
		We&apos;re back to using the computer system mostly as intended.
		There are a couple things we&apos;re still not doing right, and the head manager doesn&apos;t seem to want to do those things right, but at least we&apos;re getting back on the right track.
		Maybe their boss finally told them they&apos;ve got to use the system correctly or something.
		If that&apos;s the case, it could be the boss&apos;s boss that has the boss in a bad mood, and not the sales figures.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
